This study aims at determining the relationship between the use of language labs and the effective ways of mastering better performance of the English language. The study raised two questions. They are: “Is a language laboratory useful in teaching English to Iraqi students?” And “How do language labs help in improving students’ performance?” The study tries to measure the difference in pronunciation and listening comprehension between two groups of secondary school pupils. One group has never been to a language lab, while the other used to have their English lessons in the language lab five times a week. The first group consists of 39 pupils out of 41 pupils who are in the fourth scientific secondary stage. Two pupils were excluded because they are from families that were living in the USA. The second group contains 43 pupils who are in the same secondary stage. Both groups are taught by the same teacher. The first group is called (Group A), and the second is called (Group B)

Believers and non-believers think that religion and humour do not go together well but in fact they are more integrative. Humour has been identified as a pathway to spiritual wisdom. It is rare to find a religion, including Christianity, that does not include laughter and humour in one form or another such as myths, rituals etc. The divine laughter and humour represent the relationship between humans and religions. It is an instrument for putting humans in their place in relation to divine beings. Humour which is not spiritual is of no significance to religion. The present study is oriented primarily towards presenting humour in Jesus Christ's Biblical Verses in the New Testament. A linguistic analysis of selected verses is carried out by searching figures of speech, such metaphor according to Kostler (1964), as a rhetoric device, and how by its flouting Grice Maxims (1975) gives rise to laughter. Besides, following Attardo's (1994) and Raskin's (1985) scripts, the study discusses how the oppositeness of the real/unreal scripts clash and evoke laughter. The results show that humour in these verses is a device of persuasion since the main aim of the process of flouting Grice Maxims by the rhetorical figures of speech is to achieve persuasion.

This paper deals with the semantic extensions of verbs of touch in English and Arabic. Verbs of touch, as one type of verbs of sensation, are extended metaphorically in a variety of ways that is different from one language to another. Culture is assumed to strongly influence the semantic extensions of verbs of sensation in general and those of touch in particular. This study comes out with a conclusion that this type of verbs are extended semantically to cover a variety of meanings in both languages, English and Arabic. 1. Semantic Classification Verbs of touch are one type of verbs of sensation along with verbs of vision, hearing, taste and smell. It is significant to know that these verbs can be categorized into three types depending on the semantic roles played by their subjects. The first group is termed "the receiving of an expression by the senses independently of the will of the person concerned" (Poutsma, 1926: 341). The following example taken from Viberg (1984: 123) may illustrate this point: (1) Cathy felt a stone under her feet. Viberg (Ibid.) indicates that in (1) the stimuli are not consciously controlled by the subject. The verb used in the above example describes a process showing the perception of different phenomena by the relevant sense organ: skin. The second category is called 'active perception verbs' by Rogers (1972: 304 ; Leech, 2004: 23), 'active verbs' by Viberg (1984: 123). Such verbs refer to an "unbounded process that is consciously controlled by a human agent". (2) Peter felt the cloth (to see how soft it was).

God sends prophets and messengers to make justice prevail on the planet and threaten oppressors who take people’s rights away to humiliate them. Divine books given to prophets and messengers show how a just society can be built where people save their dignity and live a secured life. This study deal with politeness as a pragmatic strategy in such texts. The present study is going to analyze 16 texts in two religious resources. The theme of these texts deals with social justice in the New Testament and Nahjul-Balagha.  The adopted model is that of Leech’s (1983) politeness. It aims to find out the politeness maxims in the New Testament and Nahjul-Balagha of social justice texts. The study aims to reveal the similarities and differences in their implying politeness maxims.

Divine retribution is both a teaching and a core-tenet in Christianity. A large portion of Biblical texts come to embody the righteous judgment of the Almighty Lord, His gracious as well as wrath character. This paper is an attempt to pinpoint the stylistic devices and features of retribution in Biblical texts. It aims to identify the stylistic phonological, syntactic, and semantic devices of retribution in Biblical texts and find out the function of each. Furthermore, it aims to explain the overall functions such texts of retribution perform and how the overall function of these texts and the functions of the utilized stylistic devices are coalesced to produce a stylistic interpretation to these texts. It is hypothesized that Biblical texts of retribution utilize specific stylistic phonological, syntactic, and semantic devices. Besides, it is hypothesized that the functions these devices perform fall in line with the overall functions the Biblical texts of retribution have. A model is developed to analyze the Biblical texts of retribution. In addition, statistical findings are used to support the results. The findings of the analysis validate the hypotheses mentioned above.